The quiet roar of canyon winds carry the sounds of a snake's warning rattle, a distant heartbeat tom-tom and single long-held note from Douglas Blue Feather's haunting Native American flute as "Wind Talker," the first track on Flute Medicine, opens. Born of European and Native American ancestry, Douglas Blue Feather retired early from a career in law enforcement with a profound understanding of the value of peace, the high cost of violence, and the need to heal the damage of a land flooded by centuries of tears. Through the magic of Native American flute and ceremonial drums the healing can begin.

Conjuring the shadows of tribal ancestors in the horizon line haze—their ceremonial feathers jutting from their heads and shoulders like the shadows of the sweet grass along the desert rocks—Blue Feather's flute etches the spaces between subterranean caverns, rocky mountains, and the sky, merging them as healer and power animal in "Shamanic Journey." His flute translates the calls of the passing hawks, loons, or in "Speaks by the Fire" flutters in mimetic response to the flickering flames of the campfire, allowing open-eyed watchers to peer deep into the space between this dimension and the next, a space where fire opens and the flute widens.

With no need to dazzle his listeners or prove anything, the power of Douglas Blue Feather's slow, haunting flute slowly accrues in the mind of the listener until a profound inner silence takes over; the flute begins to set the rhythm for our train of thought, the brain slows down to an alpha state of bliss, and from there the shamanic power of Blue Feather's playing begins to orbit like planets around distant stars. There is in his flute a palpable sorrow but it's no mere lament for an endangered culture or people or landscape. In his dazzling but profoundly humble style, Blue Feather taps into the anima mundi and Flute Medicine becomes no mere prescription, but a world-healing force as old as North America itself. Here, there is no beginning or end to a song. Each breath is its own universe and world, with repetitions that move in and out of the world, through time and past and present like a hawk through the sky, or blood through the heart, or serenity through the soul. It's here, it's gone, it's here again, and all is as it should be and the gone is just so the here is noticeable.